


Ode to the Lettuce Leaf

by Byacolate



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Rapunzel Fusion, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Oneshot, Rapunzel Elements, Witch Mondatta, Witch Zenyatta, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 14:49:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9612344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: A runaway fails to break into his tower, meeting all of Zenyatta's standards.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this wouldn't have come to fruition without lean mean mondatta machine [venomines](http://venomines.tumblr.com/)

There's a boy at the base of the tower on his third attempt at scaling the walls. Mondatta won't be pleased.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

He's been carving from stone for all he can remember of his twenty years of life. It shows in the imperfectly chiseled faces tucked away in Mondatta's study, and the crudely-shaped birds on the mantle of the fireplace.

 

But mostly it is telling in just how many spheres line the banister, and bracket each step - the dozens upon dozens of perfectly smooth orbs that surround the forest floor below the tower windows. The closets, the cupboards, the spare and empty storage rooms are left to accommodate ever-growing pyramids of spheres.

 

It is in this way Zenyatta prefers to spend his time, for he has much to devote to the craft.

 

Mondatta has always professed pride in Zenyatta's skill, though why Zenyatta labors so intensely with his bare hands when magic would suffice is beyond him. 

 

Zenyatta can only explain the joy to be found in labor as well as the fruit so many times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I see the walls have thinned again since my last visit."

 

Mondatta often brings soapstone when he comes to keep Zenyatta's insatiable hands away from the tower stone. Sometimes he brings fine wood instead - cedar, cottonwood, block after block of butternut. But these things are shaped in half the time, and so they disappear twice as fast. The weight of stone sits better in Zenyatta's hand anyway.

 

This time, in Zenyatta's fifteenth year, the gift Mondatta offers stands at nearly double Zenyatta's height and three times his girth, all but blocking the entrance hall (curiously named, for there has never been an entrance). Zenyatta stares at the whole of it from the base of the stairs where it has half fallen into the bookshelf.

 

"I hope it was not too tiresome to carry this in yourself."

 

Wryly, Mondatta smiles. With a wave of his hand, the mighty log lifts and rights itself against the far wall, and the shelf tidies itself. "Not terribly. I trust this will be enough to occupy you until my next return?"

 

Zenyatta descends the final step and moves across the wide round room, feet bare. Palm out, he greets the tree with touch, and in an instant feels its holiness.

 

"Blessed ash," Mondatta offers, coming to stand beside him. "Something new."

 

"This is sacred." Zenyatta turns to his brother. A furrow forms between his brows. "I feel... conflicted."

 

Mondatta kisses the side of his head.

 

"Inner conflict grounds us. It keeps people like you and I mortal, and it is essential. In this case, however," his hand joins Zenyatta's upon the tree, "it is unnecessary. The lands and people who blessed this ash are under siege, my brother. The world is cold and cruel, as I have always said; it seeks to destroy and devour that which it does not understand. I was able to preserve a few saplings for the people so that one day they might restore what has been lost, and in return I was gifted the remains of this great tree."

 

He takes his hand from the wood and rests it upon Zenyatta's shoulder. "I knew you would make far better use of it than I."

 

From the tree Zenyatta carves his spheres. He works with the devotion he always has, and keeps the chips and sawdust in a wide kettle for Mondatta's use.

 

Tapping his finger into the center-most mark on Zenyatta's forehead, Mondatta had told him that the number nine was sacred to the usurped people of the blessed ash, and so over several days, Zenyatta patiently, carefully carves nine spheres and no more.

 

When Mondatta sees them next, he praises Zenyatta for the fine craftsmanship in lieu of his usual fond admonishment. He feels the soft hum of magic beneath the surface, and one by one with his touch, a holy blue glow seeps through the crevices of Zenyatta's runes. They do not once recede or fade, no matter Mondatta's distance or length of his absence.

 

"It is the tree's light, and yours," Mondatta surmises once, in Zenyatta's seventeenth year. "It is _you_ who keeps them lit."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If it is a lack of focus that keeps them alight, it's hyper-focus that makes them dance.

 

When Zenyatta isn't carving, he meditates, and when Zenyatta meditates, things begin to float. Normally it's only himself, gravitating several inches off the ground, but it seems that he and his nine sacred orbs have become inextricably entwined. When Zenyatta floats, his orbs float too. At some point he cannot place, they also began emitting a soft hum and the tinkle of chimes.

 

Zenyatta was unaware of this development as a whole until Mondatta, intrigued, had informed him during a visit in his eighteenth year. It had become another hobby of magical focus to learn to coax the same affect _outside_ of his meditative stasis.

 

His orbs - for they are his, in a way the hundreds carved of cherrywood and stone can't quite manage - become extended limbs. They go where he goes, float where he floats, chime when he laughs. When Zenyatta finds himself taken by the slow, dark miasma of loneliness, some begin to glow a sickly violet, and when Mondatta returns from his travels with blistered feet, they radiate with golden healing light.

 

And when a young man begins his fourth attempt at scaling the tower wall, they whirr about his shoulders with excitement.

 

Zenyatta can't remember the last time he's seen another person apart from his brother. The valley is remote, a magical oasis of warmth tucked away in the frozen swath of a mountain range. He's never left the tower in all his life, and none but Mondatta have ever entered.

 

This young man seems determined to be the first.

 

Zenyatta has watched his progress for half an hour now, and he's decided that all the effort, while foolish, is quite admirable. Zenyatta can appreciate a keen sense of ambition, and the man seems skilled. He's made it farther up than Zenyatta might have expected, having attempted to climb the inner walls several times himself. Once, he even nearly reached the first window before the shock of a nesting raven's indignant caw surprised him into falling.

 

He'd fallen with catlike grace at any rate, seemingly unharmed by the plummet. And he'd tried again. And again. And each time he's fallen, he's glared up at the tower as though personally offended. The sun shines bright above, half-blinding, and Zenyatta knows it casts him in shadow where he peeks out from the alcove of the window.

 

Zenyatta has never had the opportunity to feel shy before. His orbs betray the cocktail of emotions buzzing within him at the sight of a person - another person!

 

There is the possibility that he could be cruel and dangerous, and everything Mondatta has fought to keep Zenyatta safe from. He could have destructive intentions, or violent tendencies, or -

 

Or it may not matter at all, because after attempt number five, he turns and disappears past the veil of magic back into the mountains.

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


But he returns the next morning with rope.

 

The subsequent attempts are no more successful than his first, but he does appear somewhat more prepared. Zenyatta could watch him climb for hours, and does. He watches so intently that he does not notice the sun disappearing behind the clouds, or why the man startles the next time he stares up toward Zenyatta's window.

 

"Hey!"

 

Zenyatta blinks. The figure far below waves both arms.

 

"Heey!"

 

Heart leaping into his throat, Zenyatta pulls back from the window despite the protests coming from below. He presses a hand to his heart, beating three times faster than it ought. The orbs around his neck spin as wildly as his racing thoughts and slowly, carefully Zenyatta peers back over the window. This seems to be exactly what the man wants, because he jumps up, both arms toward the sky.

 

"Hello!"

 

Zenyatta blinks. Cautiously, he lifts a hand and waves back. The figure below pumps a fist into the air as he jumps. "I didn't know there was anyone here! How did you get in?"

 

_I don't even know how to get out,_ Zenyatta thinks. "It is not for me to say."

 

"What?" comes the stranger's call. "I can't hear you from so far away, you'll have to shout. Ah..." He says something else, but it's far too quiet for Zenyatta to hear. But then he calls, with great exuberance, "My name is Genji! It's nice to meet someone out here!"

 

The orbs press close to Zenyatta's neck. He smiles. "I am Zenyatta."

 

"What?" Genji calls. Softly, leaning out the window on the tips of his toes, Zenyatta laughs.

 

"Zenyatta!" he calls. It's a week of firsts - he can't remember the last time he raised his voice. Far below, Genji waves again.

 

"Hey!" he laughs, the noise broad and boisterous and Zenyatta's heart swoops. "Zenyatta! Do you think you could let me in?"

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

Zenyatta has no rope. What use would he have of it, other than to escape or to allow some stranger into his tower. Both notions were inconceivable until the very moment they weren't.

 

Genji can't throw his own rope high enough to catch, even when Zenyatta relocates to the lowest window. He apologizes to the raven for disturbing her peace, though it _is_ far easier to converse with Genji here.

 

Tearing and knotting his own bedsheets together seems both wasteful and inadvisable, they both agree, and Genji's hands are not in the best condition to try another bare-handed climb after so many attempts at scaling a wall made of stone.

 

But Zenyatta has a theory and the will to test it. When he explains it to Genji, he's met with a pause and what he thinks might be a shrug. It's impossible to see Genji's subtler motions so high up. He does wish he could see the expression on Genji's face.

 

"Sounds better than anything I might come up with," Genji calls, and raises a hand to shield his eyes from the return of radiant sunlight as Zenyatta disappears one last time within the tower - not to rethink this very hasty, isolation-driven choice, but to steel his nerves.

 

"Ah! Where'd you go?"

 

He exhales slowly and pops his head back out the window, and Genji's whole body perks up. "Zenyatta! Zenyatta, let down your orbs!"

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

One by one, each of his nine blessed spheres sink down from the window and surround Genji, as though in speculation. "Huh," Genji calls, "you really weren't jok- whoa!" He struggles a little to maintain equilibrium when the orbs sweep behind him and scoop him off the ground. Seven remain under strategic points of his body - the backs of his knees, the line of his spine, the meat of his shoulders - and two he clutches desperately for balance as they lift him higher and higher off the ground.

 

"I would not recommend jostling yourself," Zenyatta offers, once Genji is twice his height off the soil. Genji's laughter is somewhat strained.

 

"You don't have to tell me twice."

 

Without incident (discounting the raven's ruffled feathers, both literal and metaphorical), the spheres carry Genji safely to the window, where he seems more than happy to climb through of his own merit.

 

Once inside, he dusts off his white clothes and runs a hand through his bright green hair, and... oh.

 

Genji is very, very handsome.

 

His cheeks are flushed from the journey up, and the quirk of his lips seem like they must remain perpetually a hairsbreadth from mischief, but the warm brown of his eyes are sincere.

 

"Hi," he says, ruffling his own hair again. Zenyatta has no hair to ruffle. A part of him wishes he did.

 

"Hello," he returns. Again, a swift burst of shyness bubbles within him. His feet are bare, vulnerable. There is a stranger in his home. Zenyatta's orbs return to their rotation around his shoulders as he watches Genji watch him. Excitement crackles beneath his skin like magic.

 

Genji smiles like he must feel it too.

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  


Shimada Genji is a runaway.

 

He phrases it somewhat differently. His family sees him on a different path than he sees for himself, so he's 'taking a break'. Zenyatta doesn't know how one might vacation from familial expectations, but clearly Genji has been successful thus far.

 

There has been much to see in Genji’s travels from the far-off land he calls home, and over the next ten days Genji recounts them all.

 

Zenyatta has always loved to read stories of distant places, people, sights. To hear of them from someone new - someone who speaks of celebrations, of fire lights in the sky and spices impossible to describe, beasts and flora Zenyatta begs him to draw on sheet after sheet of parchment - that is a gift. The kindness of strangers, and the strangeness of the kind ("Though none so strange or kind as you, Zenyatta.").

 

On the eleventh day, Genji stretches out over Zenyatta's bed, munching an apple from the storeroom.

 

"So if you never leave the tower, where does all your food come from?"

 

Zenyatta looks up from his file to observe the shape of Genji’s nose across the room. Unsatisfied, he rises from the cushions on the floor, dusting bits of alabaster from his lap. “My brother delivers everything himself,” he says and crawls onto the bed until he’s close enough to get a proper look at the subtle, handsome curve of Genji’s nose. He reaches out to take Genji’s chin in hand, tilting his face slightly back. “Look this way, please.”

 

Even with white alabaster dust smeared across his jaw, Genji goes where Zenyatta moves him. Zenyatta can only hope he does the soft quirk of his lips justice in stone.  


  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

Genji’s face looks good carved in alabaster. 

 

Genji’s face also looks good cupped between Zenyatta’s hands when he returns. 

 

Tower life is not for Genji, and when he’d announced his desire to leave after three weeks of tales of adventure and laughter, it was with a heavy heart that Zenyatta agreed to float him safely down. 

 

“I’m just going to head into the village down the mountain,” he’d said, one leg out the window. “I’ll be back soon. Look for me in a week’s time.”

 

Zenyatta’s is an optimistic heart, but he did not truly believe him. How could he ever fault him for it; Genji has seen the great wide world, and the only thing for him here is Zenyatta.

 

Mondatta had swept in a day later, insisting he’d felt Zenyatta’s distress half a world away and came as quickly as he could. In three days he’d convinced him that all was well, and his work was more important than Zenyatta's shift in mood. On the fifth day Mondatta departed, touching Zenyatta’s cheek and kissing his brow.

 

“Your strength humbles me,” he’d said. “This world does not deserve a heart such as yours. Not yet.”

 

On the sixth morning, before the light of dawn breaks, a familiar call rouses Zenyatta from his slumber. His orbs race to the window before he does, and he leans out the window to watch them float down, lighting Genji up with blue. 

 

They lift him up just as before. Genji falls through the window with a heavy pack on his back, and he stumbles right into Zenyatta’s arms.

 

“Sorry, I know it’s early,” Genji pants, dropping his bag to the floor, and Zenyatta takes his face in both hands. “Oh! Hi. I, um… I brought you some things. Some snacks. A couple scarves. Books. I don’t know the language, but I thought you might. You’re pretty smart.”

 

“You returned,” Zenyatta says, wonderingly. Genji laughs, and the sound is kind. 

 

“I said I would, didn’t I?” he says, his lovely eyes sparkling in the dark.

 

“Yes.” Zenyatta leans down just enough to touch his forehead to Genji’s, sharing in the moment of laughter. “You did.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

“Run away with me,” Genji says, pressing his tenth, eleventh, twelfth kiss to Zenyatta’s neck. Zenyatta curls his fingers into the dark roots of Genji’s hair, where green makes way for inky black. The press of Genji’s knee between Zenyatta’s legs tangles the both of them up in his sheets, and Zenyatta fumbles, laughing, over on top of him.

 

“Run away?” he ponders, cheek to Genji’s temple. Genji hums his assent and slips his warm hand down Zenyatta’s stomach where butterflies dance, and a primal magic stirs.

 

Pushing Zenyatta over onto his back, he follows the path of his hand until he’s grinning up at Zenyatta from the low, hot swath of his pelvis. There, he plants a kiss. “It could be an adventure.”

 

He thinks of the great wide world full of evils, corruption, and destruction. He thinks of things unknown, the monsters in Mondatta’s tales. He thinks of his brother’s face to find him gone, concern turned to betrayal as though Zenyatta could ever feel ungrateful for all he’s done to protect him. He thinks of risk and caution, and the price of misfortune.

 

He thinks of the sticky sweetness of the juice on Genji’s fingers from peaches Genji swears he picked from a tree only a five minute walk from the tower in an orchard Zenyatta has never seen.

 

He thinks of a sky lit up by fireworks, and all the people he’s never met. 

 

He thinks of taking Genji’s hand and turning  _ unknowns _ into  _ familiars. _

 

“Hmm.” Zenyatta exchanges Genji’s smile with one of his own. “I have never been adventuring before. I suppose it is never too late to start.”

 

"Never," Genji agrees, and sinks his teeth into Zenyatta's soul.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One month after his impromptu check in, Mondatta finds a strip of parchment weighed down upon his desk by a talisman of love carved from sacred ash.

 

_ I may walk toward the evils of this world, but I take each step with love. May we find each other again, my brother. _

 

He presses a hand to his mouth in quiet contemplation, fear and worry stirring discord in his heart. Mondatta lifts the talisman and holds it in his palm, running his fingers over the rune carved at the center. Slowly, a faint blue glow seeps up from within.

 

With it, unbidden, comes a fond smile.

 

"Sooner than you think, Zenyatta," he murmurs, tucking the talisman away in the pocket of his white robes.

**Author's Note:**

> Inquire about fic requests [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/ask)  
> Tumblr: [wardencommando](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).  
> Battle.net ID: byacolate#1589


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